Sorry, I meant any distributions that aren’t Ubuntu. I don’t mind Mint, even if it’s based on Ubuntu!

Yep, adding a non-Ubuntu-distribution makes it a great recommendation.

Sure, but it also means we shouldn’t blindly recommend Linux and let users run into the arms of another Microsoft. Recommend good distributions.

nervous Ubuntu noises

That sucks! Which handheld is it, if I may ask?

Hey! So I have no experience with the Arch-based immutable systems (beyond my own Steam Deck), but it seems like they don’t support layering the way Fedora does with ostree. The easiest solution for you would be to create a script that you can execute after every update - that should at least keep the work to a minimum. If that’s not good enough Bazzite is probably your best bet. I really like the atomic Fedora systems, but I can understand not wanting to re-do your setup if it’s working well!

It should behave pretty much the same as a normally installed version. Hope it works well for you!

Definitely not, this kind of system is perfect for newbies. You have a distrobox you can break all day long, and your main system stays nice and working.

That’s what I mean. You put it like it’s incredibly complicated and strange, when there’s pretty much only upsides. Do you have any idea how much time I’ve spent on various distributions to debug NVidia issues? Everything is working perfectly now, and it has for months. I’ve never had this good of a Linux experience.

Yep, I do currently. I only have one main distrobox.

All that’s totally fine! I wasn’t trying to convince you. I just don’t want newbies to get discouraged by reading “all this stuff is non-standard and you can’t tinker and do stuff”. Because you can, it’s the same stuff.

Of course it’s ok! You do whatever you want. Though I’d like to clear up a couple of misconceptions:

I don’t want to deal with images. I don’t want to have to be cleaning the system from those images to reclaim my storage.

You don’t have to, happens automatically.

I dislike flatpaks, snaps and appimage on which immutable distros rely.

Fair, though you don’t have to use them at all - you could run everything in a distrobox.

The lack of customization as you can’t modify system files or install traditional packages outside the immutable framework, which limits personal tweaks.

This really depends on what system files you mean. Anything in /etc/? Fully writable. Everything is configurable either in your home directory or in /etc/, so I haven’t run into any issues with not being able to modify something - and if you do run into that, you always have distrobox.

Apps availability, not all apps on the planet exist in flatpaks.

Don’t need to, you have distrobox for that.

The learning curve.

That’s fair. It’s been very small for me, and the issues have helped me become a better Linux developer, but it does bring its own problems in some cases.

Having to change the way I interact with my computer completely, I’m too fucking lazy for that and way too cozy where I am.

That’s the thing, I hear this a lot, and I just don’t know what the big changes are. I installed Kinoite, set up a distrobox, and have been smooth sailing since - all my previous installations have had far more issues, and I just haven’t really changed much (besides switching from Ubuntu to Fedora, but I’m happy about that, fuck Canonical).

I keep hearing this, but people never elaborate on those “other reasons”. Did I miss where you mentioned them?

You mentioned storage, but AFAIK atomic Fedora doesn’t use more space (unless you keep multiple versions for rolling back).

… why would you want to install packages with sudo? The proper way is to install them (as a user, not root) using rpm-ostree, which will layer the packages on top of the image, automatically installing them for every future system as well.

You haven’t actually looked into immutable distributions, have you?

Do you have any examples of the kind of “tinkering” you couldn’t do with an immutable distro? I haven’t run into any restrictions after more than a year.

It would be a problem without distrobox. Since that gives you a normal, mutable OS on top, you don’t even notice the immutability.